In the footsteps of Velu Thampi Dalawa

Shiny Jacob Benjamin is still smarting over the last-minute changes that deprived her of the chance of receiving her award from the President in Delhi. She was part of the group of actors and technicians from Kerala who decided to accept their national award by post. The documentary filmmaker won the National award for the best biographical film /best historical reconstruction/ compilation film in the non-fiction category for her film The Sword of Liberty, the Life and Death of Velu Thambi Dalawa.

As a resident of Thiruvananthapuram, Shiny was familiar with the name of Velu Thampi Dalawa. His imposing statue on the Secretariat grounds is a familiar image of the city. “Apart from that, I knew about his passionate declaration of Independence, known as the ‘Kundara Vilambaram’, in 1809. But I hardly knew about the person or his exploits. History was never one of my favourite subjects in school,” recalls the multiple award-winner.

Imagine her quandary when she was commissioned to make a film on the legendary warrior and administrator! However, Shiny took it up as a challenge and asked for time to learn more about the man who raised the flag of revolt against the British. And learn she did. The result was the documentary, which fetched her her second national award and eighth Kerala State award.

Both the awards came as a pleasant surprise for her as her much-acclaimed documentary, In Return: Just A Book (2016), did not really catch the eye of the jury last year.

The documentary was the culmination of more than a year of reading, brainstorming, hard work, travel and shooting. “Velu Thambi Dalawa has been an enigma to me. Here was this unsullied patriot, a hero who took on the British and the local power centres alike.... He comes across in umpteen rural fables as a ruthless man who put justice, truth and his country above everything else, as an administrator par excellence and that he led a people’s rebellion against corruption and foreign domination,” reads her statement about her documentary.

It goes on to explain how there were also stories about his anti-Christian attitude and about him being opportunistic when it came to his relations with the British.

Shiny’s curiosity was piqued and she began gathering material on the Dalawa, who is believed to have killed himself at the age of 44 to prevent his capture by the British. Devaki Suresh, the producer R. Suresh’s daughter, had also done some research on the Dalawa.

Shiny and her team began their work from Thalakulam Valiyaveedu at Kalkulam in Kanyakumari district in Tamil Nadu, believed to be the ancestral home of the Dalawa, and tried to trace his footsteps from there on through erstwhile Nanchinad and Kilimanoor.

Once that was in place, she brainstormed with filmmaker T.K. Rajeevkumar and a few others in the field to decide how they would go about mapping the life of the Dalawa. “But for a common portrait of him, there aren’t many pictures or paintings (available) and so we had to visualise his entire life based on written descriptions of those times,” she recalls.

She found that there were ballads in villu pattu, sung in a mixture of Tamil and Malayalam. “However, we could not rely on it for historical details as it was mostly in the manner of an ode to Velu Thampi Dalawa. Finally, Rajeev chettan suggested that we use Tholpavakoothu (shadow puppetry) to narrate certain parts of his life, villu pattu for some portions and Thullal too,” says Shiny.

A still from Shiny Benjamin’s The Sword of Liberty, the Life and Death of Velu Thambi Dalawa, in which Villu pattu was used in certain portion to take the narrative forward   | Photo Credit: special arrangement

Since it was a completely new scene of action for the acclaimed Tholpavakoothu performers in Palakkad who are used to narrating stories from the epics, they first had to make leather puppets to depict the Dalawa, British soldiers and officers. The team then got people to draw the puppets and gave them to artisans to make the figures. “All this took time but our efforts paid off because the jury took note of the narrative that had tapped the potential of traditional and folk arts in a comparatively new medium like cinema,” says Shiny.

At the end of the marathon endeavour, Shiny says it was worth the effort because “I learnt so much of our own history.” But she hopes that the government will take steps to screen such award-winning documentaries so as to reach more people.

“I hope the government screens this particular one in schools. It is vital for our children to know about our history. Films like these narrate our history in a captivating way and that will help children connect with our history. I don’t want students to stay away from History like I used to do in school,” she says passionately.